Page:The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble (1924).pdf/232

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the needlework of a woman who felt that her education was wasted in this occupation was the means of giving her a new sense of accomplishment. To realize that some one whose opinion she respected recognized something unusual in her product and brought other people to see this also was enough to develop in her a much needed satisfaction and content.

Quite as influential as achievement in developing an individual's energies is the purposeful effort he makes in order to attain to success. Few things are more effective in enabling a man to overcome his difficulties. To have a goal toward which to work both quickens and steadies him. The winning of the great war was a means of re-creating for a time at least thousands of unhappy lives. For four years they had a cause so vital and so important that it gave new meaning to existence and new strength to being. The determination to obtain an education or to recover one's health or to pay one's debts or to build a business or to develop an invention or to accomplish any other ambition has a buoying and sustaining influence upon an individual's energies. If it is but one of a number of factors in his life and is not allowed to remain single in his mind and to occupy him to the